MERE RHETORIC: INSULTS TO HILLARY? OH COME ON
It was self-evident that Netanyahu’s “stupidity not malice” explanation for Ramat Shlomo was accurate. Just days earlier, he had moved effectively to shut down Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat’s incendiary plan to demolish dozens of Arab homes in Silwan. And yet, acting doubtless on the orders of her president, she resorted to what the ADL – no hysterical critic of the Obama administration – termed “gross overreaction.”
… constitutes a mortal “insult” to Secretary Clinton. But Assad and Ahmadinejad standing side by side and actually literally insulting her by name?
Which part of the new “positive, constructive U.S.-Syrian relationship” involves having the US Secretary of State getting publicly mocked by grinning totalitarian thugs? “President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signed a bilateral deal to remove travel visas and attended a Muslim ceremony in the Syrian capital… “We must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation or our limited understanding, so we signed the agreement to cancel the visas,” Assad said. “I find it strange that they (Americans) talk about Middle East stability and peace and the other beautiful principles and call for two countries to move away from each other,” he added. Ahmadinejad told a joint news conference: “Clinton said we should maintain a distance. I say there is no distance between Iran and Syria.” He added: “We have the same goals, same interests and same enemies.””
Suffice to say that our outreach to Syria continues apace.
Also apropos of this nonsense, you should check out the NY Sun editorial on Clinton’s credibility as she heads into AIPAC. It turns out that the woman who smooched blood libeler Suha Arafat before becoming pro-Israel before becoming mildly anti-Israel before detonating the US-Israeli alliance – it turns out that she actually has a history of strong Arab financial connections. Strange, that.
For what its worth Shmuel Rosner thinks she’ll get plenty of applause. Presumably he imagines that she’ll mouth empty banalities – “Israel’s security” etc etc – and that the crowd will pretend to believe her. I think he’s wrong. I think she’ll go in there talking about how Israel’s future requires concessions – “difficult choices” etc etc – and that she’ll be greeted by stony silence.
Then I think that anti-Israel journalists will muse sophisticatedly about how Obama had to rough up Israel because “Netanyahu’s intransigence” was stymieing the President’s vigorous appeasement of the Muslim world (my language, not theirs). In between they’ll gloat about how the all-powerful Israel Lobby has been cut down, which after all is what Jesse Jackson promised Obama would do.Â
Confirmed: Anti-Israel Jewish Groups Scapegoat Israel For Obama’s Manufactured Crisis
Mere Rhetoric, April 10, 2008:
2010 will eventually roll around and newspapers will be publishing ledes like “some analysts suggest that the Obama White House is facing the most significant crisis in American-Israeli relations in decades.” In a desperate attempt to absolve themselves of their own pretentious complicity in the international ostracism of the Jewish State, the 75 percent of American Jews who voted for Obama will join the rest of the left in scapegoating Israel.
Washington Post, March 13, 2010:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton rebuked Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Friday about the state of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, demanding that Israel take immediate steps to show it is interested in renewing efforts to achieve a Middle East peace agreement. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley described the nearly 45-minute phone conversation in unusually undiplomatic terms, signaling that the close allies are facing their deepest crisis in two decades after the embarrassment suffered by Vice President Biden this week when Israel announced during his visit that it plans to build 1,600 housing units in a disputed area of Jerusalem.
As for the “pro-Israel” Jewish groups who are, along with gleeful anti-Israel partisans and thuggish former Arafat advisers, piling on the Jewish State – this propaganda from the Israel Policy Forum landed in my inbox as a press release last week. It gushes about how the US is becoming an “honest and credible mediator,” which is strange since Clinton first acknowledged that East Jerusalem construction would continue under the freeze and then claimed to be “insulted” when East Jerusalem construction continued under the freeze. Not very honest or credible! The press release also declared “to the Israelis, we can communicate that moving forward with this East Jerusalem construction at this time would be considered an affront to the United States.” Which means that in addition to being moronic, these idiots are also imperious pricks.
JStreet, of course, is exactly where you’d expect them to be. The group pioneered using manufactured media stunts to damage Israel, so it’d be churlish of them not to lend a hand here. They shamelessly lied about being snubbed by politicians on a trip to Israel, used the fabricated incident to whip up anti-Israel sentiment and then set up a dedicated webpage to gloat about the results. After the damage had been done they admitted that the whole thing was a huge mix-up on their part. How’s that for “expanding the notion of pro-Israel”?
By the way, this post and the last one really aren’t meant to be “I told you so” posts. Exactly the opposite. Everyone knew that this was how things would play out. Obama was obviously going to detonate the US-Israeli alliance because his advisers believe that it’s in the US’s interest to detonate the US-Israeli alliance. Anti-Israel Jewish groups like the IPF and JStreet were obviously going to side with Israel’s opponents because they always side with Israel’s opponents.
It was equally obvious that ostensibly pro-Israel Democratic voters would slide from “Obama will be pro-Israel” to “it’s Israel’s fault that Obama is anti-Israel.” What else were they going to do? Admit that they desperately latched onto the National Jewish Democratic Council’s smears and lies as pretexts for voting Democratic? Acknowledge that they willfully deceived themselves on the basis of the dumbest arguments because they wanted to guilelessly vote how they always vote? If they had that kind of intellectual honesty they wouldn’t be in this position.
References and related after the jump…Â
Confirmed: US-Israeli Alliance Plummets Into “Historic Crisis,” Obama Triggers Worst Relations Since Carter
Mere Rhetoric, October 18, 2008:
Memo to ostensibly pro-Israel Obama supporters: circa 2010 there are going to be headlines about the “severe crisis in US-Israel relations.” You’re not going to be able to say that you didn’t know.
Reuters, March 15, 2010:
Israeli envoy sees “historic crisis” with U.S.:report – Israel and the United States are in a “crisis of historic proportions” over a settlement dispute that has brought relations to a 35-year low, Israel’s ambassador to Washington was quoted on Monday as saying.
The Washington Post writeup about Clinton’s over the top condemnation also included the line “the close allies are facing their deepest crisis in two decades.” But the headline wasn’t as on point and elegant as with the Reuters story, so that’s what you got.
The idea is nonetheless the same throughout. Netanyahu had announced a temporary construction freeze that excluded East Jerusalem. Clinton had described the freeze as an “unprecedented” concession. Then Israel announced new construction within that framework.
But sensing the opportunity to pick a public fight with Israel, Obama personally ordered Biden to “condemn” the Jewish State. Clinton followed up by insisting that the US had been “insulted.” For their part the Palestinians tweaked their ever-expanding construction halt demands, setting up Israel to take the blame for failed proximity talks. All over a neighborhood that borders two other Jewish neighborhoods and that had never, ever been controversial before.
Coincidentally – and just in time – there are a flurry of articles being published with different reasons why the US-Israeli relationship should be abandoned. This morning’s is from Mark Perry, who “reports” how Israelis are getting American boys and girls killed. His FP article fails to note his previous job as an Arafat adviser, though that detail did seem salient to Laura Rozen. Also seemingly salient: “There seems to be more in the ether in recent days suggesting a diverging of perceived U.S. and Israeli interests in the region.” Yes, there do seem to be that.
The really obnoxious thing? We’re supposed to pretend that this policy is a reluctant recourse by an otherwise pro-Israel administration. Or that journalists are slowly discovering and objectively describing the situation. Come on now.
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